Cate Blanchett on The New Boy, big questions and why she takes Australia wherever she goes

Australian stories are always a priority, the Oscar-winning actress says, but something that happened at Cannes this year confirmed her latest project is definitely on the right track.

Cate Blanchett and Warwick Thornton at a Q & A screening of The New Boy at the Astor Theatre on July 01, 2023 in Melbourne. Picture: Sam Tabone/Getty Images for Roadshow Films

With two Oscars under her belt and a reputation for being one of the finest actors of her generation, Australian Cate Blanchett is in demand all around the world.

But despite having called the US home in the past and currently being based in the UK, the acclaimed A-lister says she always takes part of her homeland with her.

“I don’t think you ever leave Australia as an Australian,” she says, while promoting her new film The New Boy in Sydney this week. “Even if you’re not working here you’re constantly referencing it in some way and you’re working with Australians in a piecemeal way because so many Australian filmmaking individuals work overseas.”

Even so, returning to work in the country where the NIDA graduate made her name, first on stage and then in homegrown TV and film productions including Heartland, Bordertown, Oscar and Lucinda and Thank God He Met Lizzie remains very much a priority.

In the 25 years since her Oscar-nominated turn as the Virgin Queen in the 1998 drama Elizabeth put her on the path to being one of the biggest stars in the world, she’s stayed in touch with her local roots through films such as Little Fish, The Turning and even Thor: Ragnarok.

Cate Blanchett and Warwick Thornton at a screening of their film together The New Boy at Sydney's Randwick Ritz.

Indeed, she backed off on her burgeoning film career for three-year stretch from 2008 to 2011 so she and her husband Andrew Upton could run the Sydney Theatre Company, where she’s doing her interviews today. Although she says that artists in Australia sometimes have to justify their existence in a way that doesn’t happen overseas, she says she also misses “the collaborative spirit of the way things get made here”.

“To work here with Australian crews on – it sounds like a cliche – Australian stories, is a very important thing to Andrew and me,” she says.

In more recent years, Blanchett and Upton, along with American producer Coco Francini, have helped take Australian stories to the world through their company Dirty Films, first with the acclaimed 2020 miniseries Stateless, about immigration detention in this country, and now with The New Boy, her collaboration with Indigenous director Warwick Thornton.

The South Australia shot movie tells the story of an Indigenous boy with mysterious powers being raised in a monastery – run by Blanchett’s feisty nun, Sister Eileen – in the World War II era Outback. Blanchett and Thornton, along with stars Deborah Mailman, Wayne Blair and newcomer Aswan Reid, took the spiritual drama to Cannes this year where it was selected for the prestigious Un Certain Regard category.

As star and producer, Blanchett says walking the red carpet and having the eyes of the film world watching what from the outside might look like a uniquely Australian story was about “finding pathways for those stories to connect universally with other cultures”.

Cate Blanchett as the nun Sister Eileen in The New Boy.

“That’s why it was such a privilege and a pleasure to have this film premiere Cannes with a melting pot of cultures experiencing this film,” she says. “You realise then it’s absolute confirmation that whilst it might feel that it’s absolutely rooted in Australia, the fable-like quality of the story, as designed by Warwick, has many tentacles that connect with other cultures and that was a really rewarding thing to experience first-hand.”

Thornton, whose previous films Samson and Delilah and Sweet Country had made him a self-admitted “festival darling”, and Blanchett had admired each other’s work from a distance for years, but only met for the first time in 2020 at the Berlin Film Festival, just before Covid hit. Thornton says that Blanchett then called him to say “life is too short – I really want to make a movie with you” but admits he was a little intimidated by her towering reputation.

“Every movie I saw of Cate’s, just made me more and more scared of her,” he says with a laugh, gesturing to Blanchett in the seat next to him. “But that’s my shallow existence. Especially when you were in Thor – oh my God what an evil bitch. Like, is that her in real life?”

During the Covid-induced shutdowns though, the pair struck up a connection with long, rambling Zoom calls about anything and everything, with an eye to eventually collaborating.

“I think if you were fortunate enough to be safe and relatively healthy, then you had the space in Covid to think about what was important to you and artistically, what stories do you want to be involved with? I found myself asking really big questions and I think you were in a similar place.”

Australian actress Deborah Mailman, Australian actor Aswan Reid, Australian actress Cate Blanchett, Australian director Warwick Thornton and Australian actor Wayne Blair at the Cannes Film Festival in May. Picture: LOGIC VENANCE / AFP

Thornton eventually dusted off an idea that had been kicking around for about 18 years, loosely drawing from his own experiences as a wayward kid on the streets of Alice Springs who was shipped off to a remote religious boarding school by his mother to straighten him out.

Initially it was titled Father and the Son, with the main character a priest, and Blanchett thought she’d only be involved as a producer. But as they thrashed out the ideas about the collision of Christianity and Indigenous beliefs, as well as themes of innocence, survival, dispossession and colonisation, the priest was changed to a nun and Blanchett was cast.

Indeed Blanchett says her approach as a producer is not about optioning books or finding roles for herself but rather is “director driven” and attuned to protecting and shepherding the artistic vision of people she admires.

“It’s not just about finding the money,” she says. “It’s also about being an ally, through the development process, through shooting, to the post-production process and to releasing it, because there’s a lot of times where you have to really have the filmmaker’s back.”

Having settled on Blanchett – on the back of her formidable, Oscar-nominated performance in Tar – for Sister Eileen, the filmmakers were then tasked with finding an actor who could go toe-to-toe with her as the titular New Boy, a central, but mostly non-speaking role. They found 11-year-old novice actor Aswan Reid early in their Australia-wide search and kept returning to his indefinable, magical quality as what they needed for the otherworldly character who shakes the nun’s faith to its core.

First-time actor Aswan Reid on the set of The New Boy in South Australia.

Blanchett, who has acted on stage and screen opposite some of the greatest actors ever, says she was in awe not only of Reid’s talent, but also his curiosity and ability to absorb all aspects of the filmmaking process unfolding around him for the first time.

“He knew what every department did after two weeks,” says Blanchett. “And just watching him grow technically as an actor, I just thought ‘what can’t this boy do?’. We knew we needed a magical child but then what we discovered is we also had a child with intense discipline and who was incredibly self-possessed. He is a remarkable human being and whether he decides to act in the future, I don’t know, but he has an extraordinary path ahead of him.”

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Thornton describes Reid and the other first-time actors who play the other boys at the monastery as “a pack of puppy wolves” who “scared the s**t out of me every day” but concurs with Blanchett about a bright future for his lead.

“We have beautiful lament where we talk about that we lost David Gulpilil but we found Aswan Reid in a really beautiful way,” he says.

The New Boy is now showing in cinemas.

Originally published as Cate Blanchett on The New Boy, big questions and why she takes Australia wherever she goes